True, but I think that'll have an asymmetric effect. Generally when people adopt a product it's because they have some sort of burning desire, it's faster, it let's me do stuff I couldn't before, it allows me to avoid spending lots of money, etc. Then, once they want to switch they consider the switching costs to see how feasible it is. Switching off of Oracle would presumably save many companies lots of money, the fact that they don't can only mean that switching is too tough.

This means that even with a low switching cost they still haven't created that burning desire for people to adopt the product and that's generally the harder part of the equation. I do think Cockroach is creating that in other ways with their Geo replication and sharding capabilities to name a few. But no one is switching to Cockroach because it's SQL so why not. However we know they're creating a burning desire for people to switch off their product by charging them money since people would always rather not spend money. The switching cost has to act as the counterbalance to that desire. The lower the switching cost the less you'll be able to charge people. This can be a very hard thing to solve after the fact and companies resort to all sorts of contrived things to try to get people locked in to products that don't inherently have strong lock-in.